Regulations

Granting requests made by driver trade unions, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has re-opened the public comment period for a request made by some of the country’s largest carriers to allow them to drug test driver applicants via hair sample instead of a urine sample. FMCSA currently only accepts results from urine sample testing.

Two new guidelines from FMCSA on ELDs: Older devices that buy carriers' time but aren't long-term compliance options for the mandate can be transferred to a new truck and operators will have eight days to deploy a compliant device if their ELD is found to be non-compliant.

Cross-border trucking with Mexico saw action in Congress last week, and it is set to see action next month in court, as a federal court is slated to hear arguments March 15 against a 2014 FMCSA policy allowing Mexican carriers to apply for long-haul operating authority in the U.S.

Penske will pay 344 current and former drivers $15,000 each to settle the now 8-year-old case. The case produced a landmark ruling in 2014 regarding state-level laws regarding drivers' pay and breaks, prompting concern from carriers about the potential for similar lawsuits.

"I don't think anyone has really considered what making all trucks go ELD will do and all the problems it will cause. There isn't enough parking now." --reader Josiah Gonzalez, via email. And: A little personal conveyance wiggle room.

A recent letter, urging DOT to scrap the Safety Fitness Determination rulemaking as premature, brings in a large variety of state and private industry associations as signatories, including ATA, OOIDA, NASTC and WSTA. The broad nature of the coalition should "indicate how seriously everyone views this issue."

"We're 100 percent dependent on road transportation of our cattle. Take that away from us and we're back to cattle drives." --Tim O'Byrne of the American Cattle Transporters Advisory Group, a coalition hoping to liberalize split-berth/14-hour regs for livestock haulers in light of ELD mandate.

Though President Trump’s choice to run the Department of Transportation, Elaine Chao, has been confirmed by the Senate and begun work at the DOT, there’s still a litany of posts Trump must fill at the DOT, including naming a new administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Two in five respondents to an Overdrive survey about carrying weapons have the mistaken belief that a federal law prohibits truckers from carrying a gun in their vehicle. Instead, only states have such laws, but because they vary widely, compliance becomes complicated for any gun-toting driver engaged in interstate commerce.